=head1 NAME NameCase - Perl module to fix the case of people's names. =head1 SYNOPSIS # Working with scalars; complementing lc and uc. use Lingua::EN::NameCase qw( nc ) ; $FixedCasedName = nc( $OriginalName ) ; $FixedCasedName = nc( \$OriginalName ) ; # Working with arrays or array references. use Lingua::EN::NameCase 'NameCase' ; $FixedCasedName = NameCase( $OriginalName ) ; @FixedCasedNames = NameCase( @OriginalNames ) ; $FixedCasedName = NameCase( \$OriginalName ) ; @FixedCasedNames = NameCase( \@OriginalNames ) ; NameCase( \@OriginalNames ) ; # In-place. # NameCase will not change a scalar in-place, i.e. NameCase( \$OriginalName ) ; # WRONG: null operation. $Lingua::EN::NameCase::SPANISH = 1; # Now 'El' => 'El' instead of (default) Greek 'El' => 'el'. # Now 'La' => 'La' instead of (default) French 'La' => 'la'. =head1 DESCRIPTION Forenames and surnames are often stored either wholly in UPPERCASE or wholly in lowercase. This module allows you to convert names into the correct case where possible. Although forenames and surnames are normally stored separately if they do appear in a single string, whitespace separated, NameCase and nc deal correctly with them. NameCase currently correctly name cases names which include any of the following: Mc, Mac, al, el, ap, da, de, delle, della, di, du, del, der, la, le, lo, van and von. It correctly deals with names which contain apostrophies and hyphens too. =head2 EXAMPLE FIXES Original Name Case -------- --------- KEITH Keith LEIGH-WILLIAMS Leigh-Williams MCCARTHY McCarthy O'CALLAGHAN O'Callaghan ST. JOHN St. John plus "son (daughter) of" etc. in various languages, e.g.: VON STREIT von Streit VAN DYKE van Dyke AP LLWYD DAFYDD ap Llwyd Dafydd etc. plus names with roman numerals (up to 89, LXXXIX), e.g.: henry viii Henry VIII louis xiv Louis XIV =head1 BUGS The module covers the rules that I know of. There are probably a lot more rules, exceptions etc. for "Western"-style languages which could be incorporated. There are probably lots of exceptions and problems - but as a general data 'cleaner' it may be all you need. Use Kim Ryan's NameParse.pm for any really sophisticated name parsing. =head1 CHANGES These are the original change comments. These have now been moved to the new Changes file within the distribution. 1998/04/20 First release. 1998/06/25 First public release. 1999/01/18 Second public release. 1999/02/08 Added Mac with Mack as an exception, thanks to Kim Ryan for this. 1999/05/05 Copied Kim Ryan's Mc/Mac solution from his NameParse.pm and replaced my Mc/Mac solution with his. 1999/05/08 nc can now use $_ as its default argument e.g. "$ans = nc ;" and "nc ;", both of which set $_, with the first one setting $ans also. 1999/07/30 Modified for CPAN and automatic testing. Stopped using $_ as the default argument. 1999/08/08 Changed licence to LGPL. 1999/09/07 Minor change to packaging for CPAN. 1999/09/09 Renamed package Lingua::EN::NameCase.pm as per John Porter's (CPAN) suggestion. 1999/11/13 Added code for names with roman numerals, thanks to David Lynn Rice for this suggestion. (If you need to go beyond LXXXIX let me know.) 2000/11/22 Added use locale at the suggestion of Eric Kolve. It should have been there in the first place. 2002/04/25 Al, Ben and Van are preserved if single names and namecased otherwise, e.g. 'Al' => 'Al', 'Al Fahd' => 'al Fahd'. Added $SPANISH_EL variable. All thanks to a suggestion by Aaron Patterson. 2002/04/26 Changed $SPANISH_EL to $SPANISH and now 'La' => 'la' unless $SPANISH is set in which case 'La' => 'La'. Again thanks to Aaron Patterson. 2007/04/27 Added 16 "Mac" exceptions provided by Stuart McConnachie. The license is now "the same terms as Perl itself". 2008/02/07 Fixed the version number. =head1 AUTHOR Mark Summerfield - 1998-2014 Barbie 2014-present =head1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to Kim Ryan for his Mc/Mac solution. =head1 COPYRIGHT Copyright (c) Mark Summerfield 1998-2014. All Rights Reserved. Copyright (c) Barbie 2014. All Rights Reserved. This distribution is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the Artistic Licence v2. =cut